


Predestination

by CircleUp



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics)
Genre: Alpha Tony Stark, Alpha Wade Wilson, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, M/M, Omega Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-13 19:49:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20588117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CircleUp/pseuds/CircleUp
Summary: Steve struggles to find his footing in the 21st century, and meets a mercenary doing the exact same thing.





	1. Steve Goes to Therapy

**Author's Note:**

> The Steve/Wade shipfic that absolutely no one wanted. Chapters are loosely connected with an overlying plot, probably.

Steve's therapist is a Beta.

They say that designation discrimination is illegal, and yet you hardy see any other designation in the field. Steve thinks it might be a bit of a chicken-or-an-egg situation. Maybe only Betas become therapists because there are only Betas to hire; maybe no one else bothers going through school for it because they only ever see Betas being hired. A self-fulfilling prophecy. Or maybe no one wants to bother if they don't have the pheromones to help back it up, the way it's mainly Omegas in child-rearing, or Alphas in sports. Betas are calming by nature, soothing. It's hard to panic with a Beta nearby.

Or maybe there are hundreds of Alpha and Omega candidates who make it through college and then never get past the face-to-face interview. Steve doesn't know. It's one of the many things he doesn't know, and he'd add it to his list except that his list has become so long that it's now hypothetical. He stopped bothering to write anything down after he'd reached page four. To know: Ring Pops, Beyonce, the fall of the Berlin Wall. He's happy to find out that they beat the Russians to the moon, even though he has trouble wrapping his mind around Russia as a cultural boogeyman. The pure hatred behind 'better dead than red' makes his stomach turn, still.

The Beta is sweet. They picked a nice one for him; he never got to choose, or maybe he would have if he'd ever tried to complain about it, but he didn't. Doesn't. Steve comes in once a week to sit with her, even though they almost never talk about Steve. In the beginning, during the first few sessions, he did discuss the difficulty he was having fitting in with the new world. It didn't feel wrong to do so, because his trouble adjusting was most of the reason he'd been referred here, but now he regrets having given out that information. She brings it up every session, now. It feels like ammo.

She has _Kinderszenen_ playing. Schumann. Honestly, the idea that the Germans and Americans are friends, more or less, isn't difficult to wrap his mind around. China being America's almost-an-enemy is somehow more startling, almost as much as Japan being the opposite. All the political lines have been redrawn and redrawn.

It sort of makes the war feel pointless.

"Any new cultural surprises today?" She asks. Steve blinks away from where he's trying to make a Magic Eye Picture work. He's been in this office eleven times and can't master the technique of looking through-but-not-through it. There's a part of him that wants to accuse her of making it up, like the picture doesn't actually ever form anything but colorful dots, but he suspects that mistrust will take the form of a black mark in notes that are ostensibly "only for this room."

They aren't really. Steve isn't that naive.

"Did you know you can't say negro any more?" He volunteers, and she's surprised by both him answering and the answer itself, even though she tries to hide it. "I told Tony he was rude for calling a negro—for calling someone," Steve corrects himself, "black."

She stifles a chuckle, her smile fond. Steve's gotten used to that smile. He gets it from a lot of people, often. It's patronizing. She says, "The Civil Rights movement—"

"I understand," Steve interrupts, not wanting a history lecture. "And I apologized." He scents frustrated, enough that she shifts in her chair in discomfort, but he can't quite put his finger on why he feels that way. "It's a good change. A positive one."

"It must have been a big shock for you," she invites, but Steve shakes his head.

"A lot of people say that but I suppose I was lucky, growing up here. In the city," he clarifies. "We never had the level of segregation that—well, like what I'd see on tour. I remember a fella in Georgia got really upset at me afterward for shaking a—" and now Steve stumbles over the descriptor, no longer certain of its political correctness "—black man's hand."

She doesn't react to it so it must be fine, and Steve suddenly says, "I feel recursive sometimes," and it's such an odd word choice that she does react, blinks at him until he continues. "Here, I mean. Chasing my own tail. Reliving the past doesn't help me with my current mission."

She taps her pen to her paper and speaks carefully. "Sometimes there's value in expressing your frustrations, Captain, if for no other reason than to find some personal insight to handling them."

"Then I'll speak to my friends," he says, but only receives that same patronizing smile from before.

She doesn't say, _What friends?_

She doesn't say it because she doesn't have to.


	2. Fury Tries to Pass Some News

"You know what the problem with aliens, is?" Fury asks. They'd been called to an emergency brief and arrived in twos and threes at the Triskelion around lunch time. The Avengers don't often sit well in a room together, and now is no exception; there are too many Alphas, disproportionate to the rest of the population. Even the couple of Betas don't cancel it out. It makes everyone restless, and comes out in the form of constant banter.

Tony's the one who sighs. "No, but I have a feeling you're about to tell us."

"The problem," Fury continues, ignoring that, "is communication. Now ask me why communication is a problem."

"Can we cut to the part where you just tell us what the answer is?"

Steve doesn't need to kick Tony under the table. He glares at him, and Natasha kicks him under the table for Steve. It's excellent teamwork; he'll have to compliment her later.

Tony says, "Violence isn't the answer," and Natasha kicks him again.

Fury says, "Why is communication the problem, he says to himself, fully aware you jackasses aren't listening."

Clint says, "Can we all go for food after this? Stark?"

"Sure, whatcha feel like?"

"Settle," Steve orders, and he can't command people the way Alphas do, he doesn't have the range of pheromones to make them, but the snap gets them to settle a little bit anyway.

Fury says, "You ever meet a wolf, Stark?"

"Oh my god," says Tony, slouching in his chair and over the table, his arms spread across the surface in a mockery of supplication. "Please. Please, I am literally begging right now. Just give us the cliff notes. The summary. No long metaphors. Thesis statement, go."

"A wolf," Fury continues, "communicates very differently than a human. Now let's say we meet a wolf people, and they can talk to us."

"So, furries," Clint says.

"Those wouldn't be furries," Natasha says. "They have to be human-ish."

"What's a furry?" Steve asks.

"No one tell him. No one tell him," Tony cuts in gleefully. "Let him Google it. Please Google it. Google it right now, where we can all see."

Frowning, Steve hushes him, but he does pull out his phone.

Fury says, "Is this a good time? Should I come back later?"

"No," Tony says, "finish whatever point you're eventually going to make. We all need to do something while Steve figures out how to boot his phone up."

"I didn't charge it last night," Steve realizes. He read the user manual cover to cover—metaphorically speaking, since it was a PDF—so he knows how to use the device better than the average user, really, but it isn't culturally significant for him yet, it isn't an extension of himself he can't live without. He forgets to charge it, or leaves it at home.

"So you did _not_ see the video I sent you. I knew you were lying," Clint accuses.

"You send four videos an hour," Natasha tells him. "We have to lie about it. You get all sulky if we don't watch them."

"I do not get sulky," Clint says, while starting to sulk.

"You get sulky, Barton," Fury snaps. "The problem with communicating with a wolf is it might say, my those are some teeth you have. And as a sentence, it's coherent. It makes sense. But we still have no idea what that wolf means."

"You're sulking right now," Natasha mouths at Clint.

Fury says, "Is that a threat? Is it threatening us? Is it a subtle insult? Is it being sarcastic? Do wolves compliment each other's teeth? We have no idea. And a wolf is from Earth, and in this case is speaking English. On the scale of things, it's similar to us."

"We get it," says Stark. "Just because you reach a translation doesn't mean you've translated the intent. I work on that issue constantly with JARVIS," he tells Steve. "He's getting great at sarcasm though."

"My point," Fury says, "is just because they say peace doesn't mean they mean peace."

He finally has their attention.

Tony says, after a short silence, "Are you preemptively declaring war on all aliens? Is that the point of this?"

"No," Fury begins.

"It seems like the point. Unless you're trying to get us into alien languages. Thor might know a guy."

"I do," says Thor. Clint fistbumps him. "I do not believe my professor has ever instructed a non-Asgardian, but he might enjoy the challenge."

Steve clears his throat. "Avengers." The reprimand is more purposeful this time.

Fury says, "My point, Captain, who's the only one listening, is as of this morning, a portal opened in Nevada, in Area 51. Whoever or whatever is on the other side took a classified missile, and then sent a message back, saying they would like to discuss terms of peace."

There's a moment of silence. Clint speaks first. "They stole a weapon, then want a treaty. What's that mean?"

Fury says, "Exactly."


End file.
